Hi everyone,
in yesterday's teleconference we discussed a perceived lack in the
HTML5 specification for the publication of transcripts for videos.
As I tried to point out, we already have all the technology that is
required to publish such transcripts. Just look at some existing
examples in this space:
1. This is using Flash, but has just a plain transcript below the
video, which would be the typical way in which transcripts are
published:
http://jsconf.eu/2010/communityjs_by_chris_williams_1.html
2. This provides a link underneath the video to a external document
with the transcript, something I have seen used a lot on government
web pages:
http://www.annodex.net/~silvia/a11y_bcp/demo1_transcript.html
3. These use a scrolling and interactive transcript next to/below the video:
http://www.annodex.net/~silvia/a11y_bcp/demo2_transcript.html (only
tested in Firefox)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDNZMw4_mJY (you have to click the
"transcript" button)
http://www.ted.com/talks/sheryl_wudunn_our_century_s_greatest_injustice.html
(you have to click "open interactive transcript" on the right)
The technology here is no different to when we published video with Flash.
However...
We also discussed in the meeting that we may want to have a further
indication by the accessibility interface that such a transcript is
available *at the point of selecting the video*. That last point is
important and I don't know about the existing experience of
vision-impaired users when they go to the existing transcripts above.
Maybe Janina can give us an experience report and explain what user
experience would be preferred.
>From what I understood in yesterday's meeting: we want to be able to
set user preferences for the announcement of the kinds of alternative
content that are available on media elements (in particular video
resources). For example, if we prefer reading transcripts over
watching the video with text/audio descriptions, then we can tell the
browser to always announce when there is a transcript available (of
any of the types listed above). Then the accessibility API can provide
a shortcut key to jump directly to the transcript and read that out.
Is this what we would like to achieve?
Cheers,
Silvia.